The class of 2016 contains legendary titles, including The Legend of Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, Space Invaders, The Oregon Trail, Grand Theft Auto III, and The Sims.

The Video Game Hall of Fame is a branch of the Strong Museum of Play, located in Rochester, New York. One of the few academic museums that prizes and catalogues video games for both research and display in North America, the Strong Museum also houses schematic designs for toys and other interactive media, and is typically open to the public and to scholars for research.

This is the second year of the Video Game Hall of Fame. Last year, the Strong Museum inducted Pong, World of Warcraft, Doom, Super Mario Bros., Pac-Man and Tetris. The criteria for a nomination is stated to be based on four categories, Longevity, Icon-Status, Geographical Reach, and Influence in video game culture.

The Strong Museum had 15 finalists considered for the class of 2016; including Pokemon Red and Green, Final Fantasy, Sid Meiers Civilization, and Minecraft. The selected games added to the hall of fame were chosen by a committee made up of academics, scholars, and gaming journalists.

Quick Take

The Strong Museum of Play is probably the premier source of categorization for video games today, as it’s one of the few places that has an open archive and showcases exhibits dedicated to video games. The Video Game Hall of Fame becoming an official branch of the Strong Museum is frankly a good thing, we need more of this in the culture of video games if you ask me, something official to honor where games were, and where they are going, especially when you have other media-based hall of fames that have helped legitimize other forms of media for decades.

Hopefully the Strong Museum continues this to 2017; I can’t wait to see what the next inductees will be. But what do you think? What games should be in the Video Game Hall of Fame? Leave your comments below.

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A game playing, college teaching, erudite-minded scholar who happens to write some articles every so often.
Have worked as a journalist, critic, educator and blogger for over five years now, with articles published (as user editorials) on Game Revolution and Giant Bomb as well as a contributor for the websites Angry Bananas and Blistered Thumbs. Now making TechRaptor my home.